High (and low) lights of the last lil' bit

Oh my, Blog Blog, I have so much to say and I feel like my time is expiring to do so.

New York was a blast, fun and relaxing and stressful and busy all at once. Traveling there was definitely a test of my and Carly's patience. We finally arrived, all in once piece, to the beautiful mill house in Woodstock.

I will not bore you, dear readers, with a play by play. The high (and low) lights are as follows:

-Swimming.

-Sleeping in a hammock by the stream.

-Singing and not screwing up.

-Kat and Jesse's beautiful wedding.

-Drunken sing/dancealong in the living room of the Grist Mill house when the thunderstorms chased us all inside.

-Spending a week straight with my two best girls.

-Traveling with Carly, whose grace and calm got me through repeated delays, hours and hours stuck on planes, and an unplanned 6 hour layover in Chicago. We kept saying "We're on vacation" and it became a joke by the end of our travel experience. Word to the wise from this disgruntled airline passenger: Even if direct flights cost more, just do it. Do it. The hassle of changing planes was really not worth the cost differential after we lost almost a full day of our vacation to Chicago O'Hare, which by the way, was full of the rudest and least helpful airline employees of our entire trip.

-Getting a bladder infection that turned into a kidney infection, because the medicine my dear friends and husband went out of their way to get to me was lost in the misplaced luggage that American Airlines took 3 days to get out to my friends Nerissa and Ian. I ended up in an urgent care in Coxackie, NY, and if that isn't the most unfortunately named town I've come across, then I'll be good god dammned. At least the antibiotics worked, and I was right as rain in a couple of days.

-My whirlwind day and a half in New York City, in which I went to the Met for a short time, walked Central Park, navigated the subway system, saw Times Square, went to the top of the Empire State building, ate amazing food, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, rode the Staten Island Ferry, traversed Chinatown and Little Italy, wandered the Village, saw Rockefeller Center at night, and found my way to JFK by subway. I also met interesting bums, ate Turkish food for the first time in forever, and had the best Gnocchi I've ever ever had. I loved NYC, and would really really love to go back for more time there.

-More time to really get to know Ruth and Nick better. They are supurbley enjoyable people and I am now quite fond of them both.

-The feeling that I was there for the most important event of my beautiful best friend's life, and was supremely welcomed with open arms by all of Jesse's wonderful family and friends to the event. I can't even tell you how amazing Stella (Jesse's grandmother) is, and how gracious a hostess she was for our entire stay.

-Coming home to John and my dogs. I missed them.

I would love to show you pictures, but we're having camera difficulties. I borrowed a bohemoth old digital camera from Trish before leaving, and all my pics are now on a card that I can't read in John's laptop and we have no cable to connect to any computer to pull the pics off. Ha! Funny, no?

I can't wait till I can get a real digital camera all of my very very own. I would also really like my laptop fixed.

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We are in the middle of a battle with Rich's Car Corner about our Subaru, and it looks like the final resolution will be that we bring the Subaru back and they give us back our money and all the money we've put into the car. We will miss the Suby, but since we still don't know what happened to total the damn thing, it's most likely better this way. We'll be doing that on Thursday morning when they open @ 10 a.m. We've decided to take some of the money we get back and fix what is wrong with the truck, and keep that as our backup vehicle. We will not be getting another car. This is fine with me, because a friend recently gave me her rad bicycle, and once John finishes fixing it so the gears change, I'll have that to ride around for the rest of the summer, and I have the scoot to get around town. The truck can be used for times when it is raining or I am lazy. We are going to use part of the money to get the entireity of John's debt paid off, so he is completely 100% debt free. The rest is going into savings, to be used for a deposit on a new place, or emergencies. It will not be spent. It is actually going into the savings for my personal and separate account so John doesn't have access to it, and we both think that will be the best option for us.

On the Hell's Handbasket front, I quite honestly haven't had time to do much lately. This trip and the subsequent recovering from said trip have been taking most of my time, but I did sell another Etsy item while I was away! John packed it up for me, and wrote the thank you letter for me, and even got it all sent off. I was thrilled to get a message on Etsy from the woman who bought it for her daughter, saying it fits her daughter well and she loves it, and that they are happy with the dress! That just makes me feel amazing. I'm so glad!

I bought a sewing table with fold down flaps on the sides for $4.99 at Goodwill on Sunday, and I'm going to pick it up tomorrow. After I get that, I'm hoping to do some rearranging of the craft room and back to the grind. Maybe, if I'm very nice, John will let me take $100 of the refund from the car and get my cutting table so I can actually be using my space upstairs the way I'd like to!

Starting this weekend, time will be set aside each day to sew. The rest of this week is still crazy since Katy is on vacation until the latter half, and my schedule isn't reflective of the way it's going to be after the next few weeks. John is going to his cousin's wedding in Oregon, and I won't be going, since I took all my time going to New York. There is no one to work my shift, and even if there was, I wouldn't feel comfortable asking, after everyone moved things around for me to be gone for over a week. Hopefully while he is out of town I'll really be able to knuckle down and kick my own ass to accomplish some stuff.

I have so much more to say, but I'm really beat, and I have to open in the morning, so I need to be focusing on going to bed soonish!

Hasta, peanuts.